How the skip button has changed audience expectations

Skip. Skip. Skip. Modern listeners know how to avoid something if they don’t want it. They’re able to jump over a song they’re not familiar with. They can turn down the volume or pay their way out of listening to commercials. They might give a podcast a few minutes, and then abandon it mid-sentence. 

In a word, listeners are used to having control. They aren’t just used to it. The ability to immediately and intimately influence one’s environment, reinforced by a growing lack of focus and attention, can weaken an audience’s patience for imperfection. Many consumers have become increasingly selective in their pursuit of seamless entertainment. Yet that very ability to skip, skip, skip has changed how audiences respond to imperfect experiences.

The forced patience of the past

For thousands of years, human civilization has flourished through the arts. People have painted, sculpted and built masterpieces as forms of artistic expression that have lasted for centuries. They’ve performed, too. From singing to musical instruments, drama to comedy, people have entertained through art.

But while the style of art has shifted over time, in recent years the audiences who have consumed this content have changed even faster. In the past, you had to accept what you were offered. Imagine a group sitting down to watch Shakespeare’s latest play, taking in every scene and performance with rapt attention. Not because it was perfect. Because it was unique and wonderful, even in its imperfections.

A rural farmer sitting down to hear an orchestral performance or an opera in the 19th century had a one-time shot to hear, experience, enjoy and remember the performance. No buying the album afterward. No replaying the studio recordings. No skipping the songs they didn’t prefer.

In the past, imperfection was part of artistic experiences. Experiences were unique, occasional and difficult to capture, which helped cultivate a sense of wonder around them. That experience has changed as recording equipment, playback options and the modern entertainment experience have evolved. The irony is that the introduction of infinite choices may have reduced people’s willingness to spend time with less immediate artistic experiences. 

Has infinite choice changed our patience?

Consider this: a young child of six or seven years old walks into a hotel room in 2026 after a day spent cooped up in a car. Their tablet died on the trip. Their parents, freed from the captivity of their own vehicular restraints, are already isolated on their phones. So they turn on the television — the cable television. They look at their options: two channels with cartoons playing. They start on the one with the show they like. It isn’t their favorite episode, but that’s okay. Then, two minutes in, it goes to commercials. They want to skip, and they can’t. They go to the other channel. They don’t like the show, and the episode is almost over. 

They’re stuck. Even though they’re experiencing a situation that, 30 years ago, would be considered opulent and liberating, they consider their options restrained and stunted. Why? Because younger generations have grown accustomed to choosing what they watch and moving on when something doesn’t interest them. They have an unprecedented level of control over their entertainment consumption compared to previous generations. 

Streaming apps have made things like movies, television, music and podcasts infinitely controllable. There are many advantages that come with this control, too. People can manipulate when they start, pause and end an experience. They can skip content that doesn’t align with their convictions. They can patronize hyper-segmented areas of entertainment without supporting entire channels, studios and networks.

But control is a two-edged sword. The ability to manipulate entertainment to no end means people can use any reason to skip something — even if it is as simple as boredom. A slow part of a story, a shift in a song, anything that strikes a negative note can lead to a skip. 

When every option is instantly replaceable, people may be less willing to give imperfect experiences time to resonate. That can make it harder to walk people through a story with slow or low parts that might lose them. Half-baked ideas with incredible potential don’t have the time to improve. They can’t explain themselves either, or invest in the often-slow build-up to a genuine surprise or twist.

And that lack of control on the part of the entertainer? That can be difficult for artists. Often, art requires a sense of lack, boredom and slowness. These create the contrast that makes truly powerful elements stand out. 

There’s a great example of this in the movie “Mr. Turner.” Timothy Spall’s character, the eccentric (and infinitely grumpy) artist J.M.W. Turner, goes up to a gorgeous painting of 18th-century ships in a storm. It is moody, depressing and dark in tone. Turner unexpectedly puts a bright red patch of paint right in the middle of the painting. The apparent blemish gets everyone’s attention. Then the artist completes his performance by wiping part of the paint away to create an eye-catching buoy floating in the midst of the storm.

The scene is a microcosm of so many artistic performances. They often require a bit of roughness or patience along the way to build toward a compelling final result. But sometimes, that mess isn’t a bright color of red. It’s a slow part of a podcast or a dissonant measure in a song or a dragging chapter of a book. And often those are exactly what push people to skip forward mid-experience.

Why audiences sometimes choose to skip

It’s no surprise that people are using technology to take control of their artistic experiences. The new capabilities of technology have created more opportunities for ads and promotions, making them harder to avoid. Advertising has become a frequent part of the entertainment experience. Some have put the average daily ad exposure at over 5,000 per day. Of those, around 362 are “ad-only” experiences, with an estimated 153 noticed and roughly 12 making a meaningful impression. 

Here’s the thing, though. Those figures are from 2014, when social media was young, smartphones were still proliferating, Gen Z was in their youth, and AI wasn’t an accessible phenomenon yet. 

There aren’t hard and fast figures and research around a specific number in recent years. But more recent estimates put the number more likely between 6,000 and 10,000 ads every single day. That’s so many ads that people can’t even tell that they saw them. A recent U.K. study found 76% of people exposed to test ads said they had not seen them in the previous 30 days. In other words, there’s a gap between being exposed to an ad and consciously recalling that you’ve seen it.

Advertisers can still find ways to reach audiences. Platforms like AudioGo, for instance, have developed specialized ad-creation tools. These can help audio advertisers create ads for specific audiences and then place those ads at strategic points in a podcast or playlist. But while the tools are there, that isn’t enough on its own. It’s also on advertisers to give themselves a realistic chance to stand out before listeners mentally — or literally — skip. That means earning attention in the first few seconds through things like relevance, clarity and emotion. The unsettling question is, how much should the creators themselves have to think that way, too?

Stepping back, letting go and re-engaging with imperfection

It makes sense that advertisers have to be more careful with their messaging when promoting to an educated audience in control of the medium (and the skip button). But this leads to an important follow-up: Do artists have to do the same? Rather than follow the demands of their own creative process, are artists required to shift to the demands of their audiences to avoid the dreaded skip? 

It isn’t an easy question to answer. Artists need to earn an income if they’re going to continue their work. But if they compromise that work in pursuit of the income, does it destroy the entire system? Perhaps the solution doesn’t lie in putting pressure on the creators either way. Maybe it’s the consumers of the content — the listeners, viewers and audiences across every delivery channel — who need to step back and re-evaluate how they’re using their control. Perhaps they can consider giving an unfamiliar or imperfect experience a little more time before moving on.